NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/misc/writing/2701

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-27 | 1.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a710
From: [e-mail] (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: Sequels (was Re: Work in progress)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 28 Aug 92 04:23:33 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world
Lines: 21

Tim Kuehn asks how long it takes to put together a novel of 100,000 words. I
suppose it varies; I'm a part-time writer, part-time columnist, full-time
teacher, so I'm lucky to get as much as two hours a night to work on a fiction
project. Planning, research and general fussing take up a lot of time along
with the actual smacking of fingertips on keys...

That said, the arithmetic is quite simple. Write a thousand words a day (four
doublespaced pages, more or less) and you have a draft in just over three
months. Write it so that it needs very little revision, and let's say four
months. Not many writers are that prolific (Dave Duncan tells me it takes him
about five months, but he's writing full-time). But even 500 words per day, day
after day, will give you a finished draft in half a year.

What kills many writers is poor outlining (what happens next?); others succumb
to compulsive revision (brought about by failure to recognize poor outlining,
or by delayed realization that some elements in the story need bringing out).

I've found that keeping a log can be very helpful: I open a file that's just a
list of chapter numbers, with word counts in a column. Every time I finish a
writing session, I count the words and type the count into the column; add up
the column total, and you can see the dramatic progress you're making.